Now It's Serious: Shrink Ray Hits Beer

By alexchasickJune 10, 2008

Although we’ve been covering the unpleasant phenomenon of the grocery shrink ray for a while, we’ve been slightly relieved that the shrinking products were things like soap, gum, and orange juice—not crucial staples of our existence. Not anymore, according to the Wall Street Journal: Bars and restaurants are shrinking their beers. The horror!

According to the Journal, some establishments are subtly reducing their “pint” glasses to 14 ounces, rather than the full 16 ounces that comprise a pint, either by using smaller glasses or using heavy-bottomed pint glasses (called “falsies”) that have reduced capacity. Other bars are giving patrons extra head on their pours in order to fill up the glass. When confronted, restaurateurs were alarmingly frank: A representative for Hooters (which, really, should understand that its patrons value size) explained, “We can get 20 more beers out of a keg that way.” Another defended the decision to switch to the 14 ounce glasses: “Someone who comes in and wants a beer doesn’t want a huge glass. Fourteen ounces is enough.” As a connoisseur of forties, mug nights, and gallon daiquiri Sundays, we must stress how wrongheaded a sentiment that is. Some pint fans have begun outing the faux-pint establishments and the Oregon legislature is considering having the state agriculture department monitor violations, but in the meantime, might we suggest a flask?

The shrink ray has more to do with manufacturing energy costs (fuel, electricity) than with anything else. Those costs go up, package and content sizes get reduced. Quite often, a price increase also accompanies this.

Quite simply, companies want the same or better profits, so they pass the buck onto you, the consumer by making smaller product that costs more. They can now ship more packages per truck trailer than previously and you end up paying the difference.

This actually needs some explanation. Beer in Supermarkets in Utah is weak, 3 points instead of the normal 6 points of alchohol. It’s the religious influence, and a pain in the ass. Now to me it makes no sense. If you’ve got alchohol, you’ve got alchohol. So why 3 instead of 6? You know a drunk’s just going to drink twice as many beers to get drunk, so you not only have a drunk on your hands, you have a drunk who’s fat and gross. There’s nothing worse.

I’m still pissed that some bars serve 16 oz “pints” instead of 20’s. @ninjatoddler:
Dude, Grand Old Day, what did you expect. You’re on the wrong side of the river anyways, Mississippi to St. Croix is a no-man’s-land.

I actually just emailed the North Carolina Standards Division a few minutes before reading this post. I asked for a pint at the Carolina Beer Company at CLT (the Charlotte airport) a few days ago. I was offered a “large” instead, though the waitress didn’t know how many ounces it actually was. I said I’d just have a pint, and asked to make sure that it was indeed 16oz of beer, to which I was told “so, a small?” I asked again, “so a small is a pint, 16oz, right?” She said “yeah, that sounds right.” I got served what was obviously 14oz of beer with one of those super-thick glass bottoms to make you feel like you’re actually drinking out of a pint glass.

Under-pours, obvious over-heading, etc, just annoy me. I think the most annoying, though was at a Great Lakes Brewing Company-affiliated bar at CLE. They served beer as 12oz or 23oz. I wanted a pint. Not 12oz, not 23oz. They had a ton of pint glasses along the shelf. I asked for a pint, pointing to the pint glass, and was told “we don’t serve beer in those.” I finally got the bartender to pour me a pint, in a pint glass, and just charge me for 23oz (fair enough if they don’t normally serve that size; that’s just how much I wanted to drink at that point.)

This is actually old news.
Most bars have been using “American” pint glasses, which are 14 oz, for years. (take one of the glasses you’ve stolen/bought from your favorite bar, and measure for proof.) True pints mainly have been served at British/Irish themed pubs and costlier connoisseur establishments. Guess most folks didn’t know that that those glasses with the bar’s logo on them have been cheating them of 2oz per glass for quite a long while…
As for more head in the pour… shame on them!

I like the logic of people who come in for a pint not wanting a pint, but wanting 7/8 of a pint. And I’m sure that no one ever orders two pints. Because clearly they don’t want a pint to begin with, so getting 1 and 3/4 pints is just ridiculous!

16 oz of any drink isn’t that much. They’re trying to say that having a can of beer and a half isn’t what consumers want.

@magdelane:
Sorry, but “American” pint glasses are indeed 16 oz, and “most bars” do not use 14oz versions. An Imperial pint is more like 19oz. You’ll often see them looking like American 16oz pint glasses, but with a bulge near the top. The 14oz glasses are a new thing. Now, you can easily tell them due to the thick bottom. However, they’ll probably soon start making them slightly narrower, so they don’t have the tell-tale thick bottom nor are shorter. I have dozens of pint glasses as I collect them, and I’d like to think that I could tell the difference. I have yet to see an American 14oz glass that’s been narrowed or anything of the sort to more easily masquerade as a pint glass; they just all have that extra-thick bottom. I don’t know what bars you go to, but I certainly have found them to be the exception rather than the rule.

Watch as industry flacks begin spinning that a pint is actually a “pint”, a colloquial term first popularized by Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. As in, “Pint whare the bird is, luv.”
No, I haven’t seen Mary Poppins, but I’ve read Sandman, and if Death loves Dick’s Cockney accent, that’s well and good for me. I mean, she’s Death.

…To be followed by Big Oil claiming that a gallon is actually a “gallon”.

Oh, and I just actually read the article and noticed that they quoted Jason AlstrÃ¶m of beeradvocate.com. The AlstrÃ¶m Brothers are awesome, as are the BeerAdvocate beer festivals that they host in Boston.

@jpp123:
I think there may be some confusion here, as you are indeed correct that an Imperial pint is 20 Imperial fluid ounces. However, that equates out to approximately 19.2 US fluid ounces. Now, if only I could order a half-liter of beer (about 16.9 US fluid ounces) worldwide and get the same measure without resorting to stupid units that don’t even correspond between different countries…

It is nice that UK bartenders are smart enough (even without the line!) to pour you a proper pint with the right amount of head. In the US, 3″ or more of head seems to be considered acceptable at most places. It’s always nice to find an establishment that will either let it settle (and ask if you mind waiting while it does), or pour off the head and pour more beer into the vessel to top it off to a proper level.

@Major-General: Sure the head doesn’t count. But every beer needs some to breathe.

The metered mugs leave the proper amount of room for head space. They are the perfect vessel. I wish they were coming stateside. It would nullify this controversy, but our government is too busy pretending alcohol is evil to do something good for it.

It makes more sense to patronize places that pour a proper 20oz pint. Go to an Irish pub that’s run by Irishmen If you go to a crappy sports bar or the like then oh well. If was I was a bar owner I’d happily separate the sort that hangs out at a sports bar or club from their hard earned cash more efficiently.

Well, now it’s time to start a violent revolution. Hike gas prices? Ok, I can live with that I knew I’d probably be paying a lot by living so far from work. Shrink the size of my ice cream? Meh, at least it will help me from eating too much. Shrink my beer? Now it’s time to get out the automatic weapons.

I dont know where you people live, but were I live bars dont sell “pints” of beer. They sell a glass of beer that happens to be about the amount in a pint. So even if there WAS a measurements law they would NOT be violating it since they arent advertising as a pint.

I know that there are problems with the hops and barley supplies (plus the rising cost of actually transporting beer), but really, if you’re going to reduce the amount served, you need to post a notice!

“Due to rising costs, beers are now served in 14 oz glasses. If this makes you unhappy, vote for better fiscal and energy policy.”

@linbey: It’s the same around me (Philadelphia). I never heard of ordering a pint of beer until my sister moved to England. Everyone around here just orders “a ” a few places, mainly chain restaurant, will ask if you want 16oz or 20oz. Most of the time it’s just a 16oz glass, and I tend to go to bars and pubs that fill them properly. I also tend to drink beers that are a little bit flatter and don’t form as much head.

I don’t know of any place around here that has advertised beer as being sold by the pint. Perhaps it’s different in Oregon. But still, if my favorite places to drink suddenly started serving 14oz of beer instead of 16oz, I’d be pissed off.

It’s only illegal if they call it a ‘pint.’ They’ll sell it as a ‘glass of draft beer’… some establishments have more than one size, possibly now you’ll be offered the 14oz or the 18 oz instead of the 16 and 20.

The Germans have it figured out. You get your ‘beer’ filled up to the line, which marks the contents of the glass to that line. The rest of the glass is head, as it is the indicator in Germany of good quality ingredients. Here is an example of a 1/2 liter glass with sufficient head, filled up to the line. (Once the head settles) ;)[www.washjeff.edu]

For those that haven’t seen beer sold in pints, it depends on where you go. Places that call themselves “pubs” as opposed to sports bars (Keegan’s or o’Gara’s as opposed to Champs) will be the ones to have “pints.”

I noticed recently that the chain restaurants around me have stopped calling them 16 and 20 oz sizes but rather small and large. Not that 20 oz is a large beer. I’d say 64 oz is a large beer and 20 oz is a tease.

Being such a beer connoisseur, to start with a real pint is actually 20oz, but if going by US standards 16oz will suffice. I’ve seen this already happening at many of the chain type places, which I typically avoid. My watering holes serve either a full Imperial Pint or by the 1/2 liter. While 2oz isn’t a huge difference, when they are already raising prices due to last years hop shortage it compounds the issue.

@psychos: Actually magdalene’s totally right on this – if by “pint glass” we’re talking about the Anchor Hocking, tapered, heavyweight glass that became a sort of “standard” draft beer glass (as opposed to the old mug) back in the early 90s. That glass is and always was 14 oz. as a standard. There were 16 and 20 oz. versions available, too – but those were sold for home use or special promotions, and few, if any, bars used ‘em.

Back when I was serving beer in an Irish pub in the early-to-mid 90s, only our stouts came in a “true” pint – the 19 oz. “imperial” pint, often provided by the Guinness or Murphy’s vendors. The rest of our beer came served in the nearly impossible to break (hence their popularity) Anchor Hocking glasses.

While I recall checking the catalog on this, the real reason I’m certain of the volume is that I won a $50 bet with a customer who insisted that those glasses held a full, 16 oz. pint. After pouring a 12-ounce bottle of beer into the glass with a modest, 1/4 inch head, the glass was esentially full to the top and could in no way have taken another four ounces.

@oneswellfoop: Agreed, if most people just quit going to shitty chain bars this would usually not be a problem. I am a bartender, as well as a lover of beer. I NEVER pour a glass full of foam, that to me is a hallmark of an inexperienced bartender. Its not that hard to pour a pint, that is a pint, with a small head on it.

So far, my survey of Murphy Street pubs in Sunnyvale and finer beer-drinking establishments in the San Francisco Bay metro area shows that west coast establishments serving predominantly German, English, Irish, or Belgian beers have not sunk to this practice yet – probably because they are too damned honest and like beer too much!

Went to my local Chuy’s, ordered a pitcher. Let the head die down, and asked to have it filled up.YES! It does make a difference if you pay for this and get that, it’s wrong.I buy a six pack of Miller High Life 16oz cans for $5..473 L = one pint. Hops shortage is bullshit. They are trying to sneak wheat into all beer! Yuck! Sam Adams for $7? Forget it!

One of these days, they will start selling gasoline by the liter instead of the gallon. When gas hits 5.00/gal, we’ll just be paying $1.32 per liter. And then we can watch the price rise to $5.00 all over again!

I feel for the craft breweries, there’s such a place near where I live that I visit often and they had to raise their monthly gathering pints by a dollar, prices are KILLING small breweries. It’s a sad state of affairs. I can’t stand budweiser, and with the most recent bill going through congress, a disaster of this magnitude hasn’t struck craft breweries since the start of Prohibition. (Pre-Prohibition there were apparently 20x more craft breweries than there are today, and Prohibition pretty much wiped em all out).

Love your beer, support your local breweries!
“What kind of ‘Local Beers’ do you carry?”

It’s a simple question and it could save this country from the Annheiser Busches.